Social responsibility in situations of limited agency: Experiences from a community-based participatory research project

Abstract

This short presentation complicates the position of academics as the per se more powerful actors in action research by describing situations of limited agency, or even helplessness: One at the beginning and one towards the end of 3.5-year long community-based participatory research project. In this project, academics had established partnerships with citizens, health and social care professionals and political leaders to initiate caring communities that support aging in place in four municipalities. Academics’ roles and positionalities differed between places, and it shifted during the project. Experiences of this project indicate that the relation between enacting responsibility and agency/power are intricate. Examples discussed include the co-design of an action research sub-project and the inclusion of marginalized people. Understanding social responsibility as caring might yield orientation for the practice of future action research, particularly when reviewing or previewing agency and power, and for whom and towards what end it is invoked.